In Two New Books, DVC’s Robert Abele Hopes to ‘Wake Up’ Citizens

Robert Abele

Robert Abele, philosophy professor at Diablo Valley College, recently had his book,
Democracy Gone: A Chronicle of the Last Chapters of the Great American Democratic
Experiment, published by Rowman/Littlefield. His third book, The Anatomy of a Deception, is coming out in October.

Abele’s first book, A User’s Guide to the USA Patriot Act, was published in October of 2004.

Democracy Gone, he said, was written with the explicit intention of making it accessible to the
general public, but he finds that it also works well in class when discussing philosophy
and politics.

“Both books (Democracy Gone and Anatomy of a Deception) were focused on helping citizens wake up to the realities of contemporary American
economy, politics and culture,” he said.

For two years, Abele was the prime time commentator on the KVMR-FM evening news in
Nevada City-Grass Valley, presenting weekly radio essays on philosophy and politics.
Democracy Gone grew out of that experience.

“I thought I would do my part to inform and prod people to think about the significance
of events and issues that were in the news, and, in many instances, issues that were
not but should have been in the news.”

The general theory behind Democracy Gone, Abele said, “is that we have essentially lived through the collapse of what was
left of our democratic form of government.

“Democracy is always about the people, their rights, their power, and their common
good. The issues dealt with in the book demonstrate that the main figures who were
and are moving politics and the economy today were not and are not committed to democracy,
but rather to increasing their economic and political advantage over the masses of
citizens. The book is a clarion call for increasing our knowledge, thinking, discussion,
and even action in the face of these significant movements of capital and political
concentrations of power.”

In Anatomy of a Deception, Abele said he hoped to demonstrate that the U.S. media, and those who were given
prominent time in the media in 2002-2003 to state their positions regarding the forthcoming
invasion of Iraq, deliberately ignored significant evidence, ethical principles, and
legal obligations that would have decisively undermined their support of a U.S. invasion.
The evidence countering support for an invasion was, he said, widely available prior
to the actual invasion to anyone who cared to look, but was set aside by mainstream
media “debates” on the invasion.

How has teaching at DVC impacted his writing?

“One of the many great things about being at DVC,” Abele said, “is that the atmosphere
here encourages such things as I am doing, both in class and in my research and writing.
The faculty and administrators I have had experiences with have been incredibly supportive
of my projects, and that encourages me to push forward with new projects.

“I love to research and love to write,” Abele continued. “They are right up there
with my love of teaching. Teaching and writing allow me a means of promoting substantive
dialogue on the issues that face us today. That is what democracy is all about: rational
dialogue. We have lost that over the past 30 years.

“My single hope in undertaking these projects,” he said, “is to make a substantive
contribution to the cultural and political dialogue we need to be involved in today.”